27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Issue No.553
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553 |
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Limelight
Let us wage war
The warm rays of the sun in the heavens had not penetrated the black winter clouds for months, leaving the earth covered with the white-frosted snow. The forbidding arctic weather kept the young boy indoors, who took to playing in his father's factory. It became his passion. As a young man he experimented with nitroglycerin during the long winter months. He dreamed of transforming this dangerous substance into a safe and useful explosive. By 1875 Sweden's Alfred Bernard Nobel (1833-1896) patented 'blasting gelatin'. Adding wood pulp and sodium he produced the 'straight gelatin dynamite' sold today. Nobel soon became one of the world's richest men, setting up factories and armament plants around the world. But his wealth and success did not sit well with him. He suffered increasingly from guilt for having invented a substance that caused so much death and destruction. He had hoped and dreamed that his invention would be used for peace - not war. He agonized over how to make amends. Before he died he set up a fund of about $9 million. The interest was to be used to award annual prizes to persons, regardless of nationality, who made valuable contributions to the good of humanity. One of the prizes was reserved for the most effective work in the interest of international peace. Now, he felt he could die in peace, believing he had redeemed himself for his misguided youthful folly. He was a humanitarian, the next generation's peacemaker.
Five years after his death, in 1901 the first Nobel prize for peace was shared by Jean Henri Dunant of Switzerland for founding The Red Cross, and for initiating the Geneva Convention, as well as Fréderic Passy of France for founding The French Peace Society. The peacemakers have lost to the warmongers in a century marred by two World Wars, the use of the atomic bomb, the rise and fall of Communism, and the many wars that ensued. Our part of the world was not spared. An unjust and ignoble war saw the Palestinians struggle daily for the right to survive in their own homeland.
Mother Theresa
Throughout the centuries man has spent at least as much time at war, as at peace. Records show that in ancient Greece, the month-long Olympic Games served as a temporary peace between the many warring city-states. Following them, the Romans maintained peace during a period known as 'Pax Romana', which lasted over 200 years (27 BC - 180 AD) covering most of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. In later years the church became the greatest force of peace. While religions lead the way, simple citizens, writers, philosophers, groups, organizations, governments, have toiled and laboured to ensure peace. Names of such people as Mohandas Ghandi, Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King, Jr., of recent times stand side by side with names from, history such as Maximilien de Béthune, William Penn, Abbé Charles Irénée Castel de Saint Pierre and Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel. Where are such men today?
Some nations have been able to maintain peace, and we salute them. The Scandinavian countries - Sweden, Norway, Denmark, as well as Switzerland, among others, have managed to avoid wars within and beyond their borders for the last century, proving that it can be done. Perhaps they have reached an even higher degree of refinement in thought and deed than the rest of the world. Of course, peace without justice is no peace.
It is not the Americans' lifestyle, liberties, values, principles, nor is it their inventiveness, creativity, entrepreneurship, and progressiveness, that are under attack. It is their inexplicable, unjust one-sided policy in the Middle East that has singularly created the divide; and has driven sane men to insanity.
There are never good reasons for war, only causes and excuses. War is a man-made disaster that dwarfs all of nature's quakes and floods. It has taken more lives, cost more money and caused more grief and destruction than any other calamity known to mankind. Noble and lofty reasons are given for war, but its causes are of baser stuff. While courts settle differences between individuals, war settles differences between nations. Efforts in the last century to organize international associations to serve this purpose have had little success. Forty-two countries established the League of Nations in 1918, but major powers such as Japan, Germany and the US never joined. In the wake of WW-II, in 1945, they tried again. Fifty countries created the United Nations Organisation. One of its earliest resolutions under the leadership of Great Britain and the US was uprooting more than half of the people of Palestine in order to establish the State of Israel in 1949. This resulted in more wars and disputes for the next 50 years in the Middle East. Israel, the creation of the UN, has since regularly ignored all of its resolutions.
Not every war waged by a mighty power over a backward weaker, one ends in victory. History is replete with examples of such 'David and Goliath' miscalculations. Napoleon's mighty army was buried under the relentless biting snow of Moscow. Indo-China has spelt disaster for many intruders throughout history, the latest victims being the French and the Americans. The assumption that history repeats itself should have by now become obsolete. Not so! The Russians followed in their footsteps marching off to Afghanistan in 1979. People have lived in Afghanistan for the last 100,000 years. It has been invaded by Aryans, Persians, Macedonians, Arabs, Turks, Moguls. From 1839 to 1919 the British invaded Afghanistan no fewer than three times. After 10 years and an enormous loss of life and equipment, the Russians finally withdrew. Many believe this was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.
Once again more blood will be shed besides the 6,500 martyrs of the World Trade Center. The tragic reality of war is the inevitable sacrifice of ordinary people. Their leaders, the rich, the mighty, the powerful, burrow underground in concrete climate- controlled luxurious shelters. The poor, the sick, the hungry, the helpless, the homeless pay the price of war. It is innocence that suffers. It is innocence that dies. It evokes pain that shatters the human heart.
Trembling on bended knees the world prays for peace, but expects war. Since man seems unable to rid his vernacular of the word 'war', then so be it. Let us wage war. Let us wage war on terrorism, poverty, pollution, and illiteracy. Let us wage war on drugs, crime, violence and injustice. Let us wage war on every form of discrimination. These are the wars that will save, not destroy human lives.
Pacifists have traditionally been mocked and dismissed as soft rhapsodists or moonstruck dreamers. But their time has now come. The late John Lennon of the Beatles was the pacifist of a generation that re-echoed his song 'Imagine' before he was struck down in 1980 by the bullets of a madman in New York City. His song rings in our ears today:
"They may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one
I hope someday you will join us,
and the world will live as one"
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